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Chardonnay in Aisle 3?

YOU can do it in 35 states — you can pretty much do it anywhere in the wine-producing world — but you cannot do it in New York. Do what? Stop at the grocery store to pick up a loaf of bread, some cheese and a bottle of wine.

Since Prohibition ended more than 75 years ago it has been illegal to retail wine in New York at any place other than a licensed liquor store or a winery. This strikes many people outside of New York, who can buy wine at outlets from Whole Foods Markets to gas stations, as curious if not downright quaint.

In his 2009 budget, Gov. David A. Paterson has proposed allowing grocery stores to sell wine as a means of raising money through licensing fees. He also proposed practically tripling the excise tax on wine sold in New York.

As the April 1 deadline approaches for approving the budget, the proposal has ignited a furious lobbying campaign pro and con. Grocers, naturally, favor opening the door to selling wine.

“It would be like a dream come true,” said David Grotenstein, the general manager for Union Market, which has two high-end stores in Park Slope, Brooklyn. “It’s like the lost cross-merchandising element of retail — we seem so backward and primitive here in New York.”

Opposing the proposal is an unlikely alliance of distributors, liquor and wine store owners, who predict that more than a third of New York’s 2,700 liquor stores would go out of business; some New York wineries and the Teamsters union, which fears losing its role in distribution; and Baptist ministers, who contend that grocery sales would not simply raise the general level of sinning but also facilitate underage drinking.

“We don’t see any great public clamoring for this,” said Michael McKeon, a spokesman for Last Store on Main Street, the evocatively named coalition opposing the proposal. “This is an idea wholly generated by the big stores — solely a money grab.”

While the debate has centered on nuts-and-bolts public policy issues, I wondered what was in it for wine consumers. As a dedicated consumer myself, I can’t help but think that the increased competition promised by this proposal will offer me more choices, particularly if the embryonic plan, which Governor Paterson offered more or less as a line item embedded in his budget, is fleshed out to benefit owners of liquor stores, too.

Right now, the proposal would simply allow grocers, convenience stores and anybody with a retail beer license to apply for a wine license as well. The budget projects that the state will reap $160 million in a two-year windfall in licensing fees. Grocers would have to purchase licenses on a store-by-store basis, but the proposal does not limit the number of licenses a grocer could have. Retail wine and liquor shops, on the other hand, are restricted to one license, and therefore one store, in the state.

“The retailers are not at the table,” said Richard Olsen-Harbich, the winemaker at Raphael in Peconic, N.Y. “They need to get something out of it as well.” Mr. Olsen-Harbich said that while the concept of sales in grocery stores is a good one, he can’t support the current proposal, which he described as not well thought out.

“I don’t think it was done with the interest of the wine industry, the grocery stores or the wine shops in mind,” he said, but simply to increase revenue.

Photo

TO BE DEBATED At the Kings supermarket in Short Hills, N.J., shoppers may buy wine. Could New Yorkers handle that?Credit
Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

Nobody supporting the bill would begrudge some concessions to wine and liquor stores, which right now are not permitted to sell cheeses, bread and other foods that would naturally pair with wine. They can’t even sell beer, which is sold in groceries, delis and convenience stores. If groceries are permitted to sell wine, perhaps wine shops ought to be able to sell cheese and beer.

“Wine is meant to be consumed with food; why shouldn’t it be merchandised with food?” said Joshua Wesson, the senior director for beer, wine and spirits for the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, which operates around 200 groceries in New York, including A&P, Food Emporium, Pathmark and Waldbaum’s.

Mr. Wesson founded Best Cellars, a wine retail chain based in New York, where he had one store. He sold the company to A&P, so he is a rare person who, as both a wine retailer and a supermarket executive, has stood on both sides of the question. “I was a supporter of it when I was a pure stand-alone retailer,” he said. “I’m a wine and food guy. I’ve always believed they belong together on the table, and they should be sold that way.”

Mr. McKeon of Last Store on Main Street disparages such concessions. He asserts that the proposal will not generate nearly the revenue that the governor projects and predicts that 1,000 of the state’s 2,700 wine and liquor stores will have to close. “When you figure in the loss of jobs, the loss of sales and the loss of excise taxes, it’s a money loser,” he said. As for any trade-offs that would allow wine retailers to hold more licenses or sell food, Mr. McKeon is scornful.

“It’s absolutely a joke that we’re going to compete with Whole Foods and Wal-Mart,” he said. “The mom-and-pop stores, they don’t need to change the law.”

Opponents of the measure raise the specter of big groceries, with shelves full of inexpensive mass-market wines, undercutting mom-and-pop stores to drive them out of business. Instead of the hands-on personal service of wine shops, they say, consumers will be left with impersonal, ignorant supermarket personnel.

It’s possible. But for every wine shop in Manhattan with a knowledgeable, hands-on proprietor, more chug along with little expertise, selling only those mass-market brands that may well dominate in many supermarkets. These shops will have to step it up in an environment of increased competition.

Mr. Grotenstein of Union Market in Brooklyn said competing with supermarkets is a way of life even for specialty food markets.

“Whatever the specialty markets put out, the supermarkets absorb and make it mainstream,” he said. “We just have to find better cheeses, better charcuterie, fresher produce, that’s the challenge we face.”

In California, where stores selling wine are about as common as slot machines in Las Vegas, specialty wine shops seem to have no problem co-existing with supermarkets selling wine. As for the argument that wine in supermarkets will facilitate underage drinking, it doesn’t seem to be true in the states that permit supermarket sales.

“What do kids drink?” asked Rick Garza, the deputy director of the Liquor Control Board in Washington State, which has permitted supermarkets to sell wine since 1969. “In Washington they drink primarily beer and spirits, not wine. People in the prevention community will tell you that very seldom do we have youth-access issues around wine.”

In New York, the plan most likely has not taken its final form. State legislators have already proposed allowing wine shops to sell foods typically associated with wine. Assemblyman Marc S. Alessi, whose district on eastern Long Island includes 32 wineries, has offered another plan that would permit groceries to sell only wine from small producers, which he said would include not only 248 of New York’s 250 producers but vintners from all over the country.

“I’m not sure whether this is going to end up in the budget or not,” Mr. Alessi said, “but this issue is not going to go away.”